Visual telepresence relies upon a capture of an image of a first location and the provision of the image to a user at a second location for review. In many instances, the first location is remote from the second location of the user. Upon review of the image, the user may take various actions including inspection of a workpiece assembled or otherwise fabricated at the remote location, monitoring of the operations occurring at the remote location or manipulation of a robot, end effector or other device at the remote location in order to perform various operations at the remote location. For example, the user may rely upon the image in order to navigate or position an object at the remote location, such as by repositioning the camera that captures the image.
Some of the actions supported by visual telepresence require significant fidelity for the operator to have a sufficient feeling of presence at the remote location, such as those actions that involve the inspection of a workpiece or the monitoring of the operations occurring within a remote confined workspace. However, the images captured of the remote location may not provide sufficient information or be of sufficient quality to permit a user located remotely to perform the desired actions with the necessary precision. In this regard, images may be captured by a monoscopic viewing system. However, monoscopic viewing systems do not provide binocular depth cues to the user that are desired in at least some instances in order to permit the user to perform the requisite actions with the desired precision.
Alternatively, the images of the remote location may be captured by a stereoscopic image system. Stereoscopic image systems include a pair of cameras that capture a stereoscopic image pair and may provide binocular depth cues for the users. However, stereoscopic image systems generally position the two cameras so as to be toed-in as shown in FIG. 1. In this regard, the optical axes defined by the two cameras converge and cross one another. Due to the toed-in configuration of the cameras, the cameras of stereoscopic image systems generally have non-parallel fields of view. As a result, the images displayed suffer from geometric distortion, such as keystone distortion, as shown in FIG. 2 with different keystone-shaped images presented for the left eye view and the right eye view. This geometric distortion created by stereoscopic image systems may reduce the operator's feeling of presence at the remote location and may increase the difficulty associated with user's reliance upon the image in order to remotely perform various actions with the desired precision and, in some instances, may cause nausea, fatigue, and/or visual phoria.